Media

Wole Soyinka was addressing a conference on the issue of the ‘brain drain’ from African countries. He remarked on how many of the speakers before him had lamented the flight of millions of Africans to the West and how apparently desperate were these speakers, who included African heads of state, to reverse the trend so that the bright young minds and their skills could be retained on the continent. [Pambazuka]

John Barbieri writes about the pervasive and dangerous myths that have characterized the coverage of Kenya’s post election crisis in the US and elsewhere. He is dismayed, outraged and disgusted by how the situation and violence in Kenia has been depicted and framed in the international media, especially in the United States. [Pambazuka]

Pambazuka Editors give you a few snippets of what is a long struggle to get US Mainstream media to stop using a racist and stereotypical lens in its coverage of Africa. You can find the fascinating discussion at www.h-net.org/~africa. [Pambazuka]

Africa, ‘the continent of terra incognito was, and continues to be, constructed as “nothing” and corpulent darkness’. Annwen Bates on the visual representations of the spectacle of aid in Africa. [Pambazuka]

The similarities between Iraq and Darfur are remarkable, writes Mahmood Mamdani. But the violence in the two places is named differently. In Iraq, it is said to be a cycle of insurgency and counter-insurgency; in Darfur, it is called genocide. Why the difference? [Full Text Article]

By Francis B. Nyamnjoh (originally published in Bookmark: News Magazine of the South African Booksellers’ Association, July-September 2006, pp.29-30). Drawing on his own foray into the world of South African publishing, Dr. Francis Nyamnjoh unpacks some of the challenges facing African literature – on the African continent. [Full Text Article, html]

By Francis B. Nyamnjoh (Originally published in Rhodes Journalism Review No. 25, November 2005, pages 3-6). The basic assumptions underpinning African Journalism in definition and practice, are not informed by the fact that ordinary Africans are busy Africanizing their modernity and modernizing their Africanity in ways often too complex for simplistic dichotomies to capture. [Full Text Article, pdf]

It is of utmost importance that if you care to understand what is happening in Guinea, you rely on a news source that will give you a fair and balanced report or analysis of the situation on the ground. By Mariam Yansane. [Full Text Article, html]

Africa continues to be misrepresented as a continent of victims of poverty, violence and ridden with HIV/AIDS. [Full Text Article]

By Milton Allimadi (2006-11-16), Pambazuka. The overall Western attitude towards Africa is that the continent is trapped in a tribal time warp. The Western media plays a vital role in perpetuating this misconception. Milton Allimadi points out that Western journalists and editors still have the same colonial attitude towards Africans. “…Not much has changed since the earliest days when Western reporters first started to cover African countries on a widespread basis,” writes Allimadi. [Full Text Article, html]